What is it about water that inspires deep, rich stories about people who are all too real. Here, there's the six-year-old Tink who helps her father deliver a baby. Harriet, whose friend betrays her, in secret, but remains a friend at last. And others. But most of all, there's Silvia, and the disobedience of water, title story to this collection by Sena Jeter Naslund.
All of the "stories and novellas" in this book are of that superior quality which gains awards and kudos for originality of voice. But what touched me most is Naslund's unusual eye for emotional detail. There is dialogue in these imaginary memoirs, but her particular gift lies in painting seductive wordscapes which mesmerize and draw the reader into the lives of these characters quickly and thoroughly. Sympathy flows easily here. Understanding is given without pause.
And the water? In Disobedience, Naslund's survivor heroine, Silvia, and her son, Evan, meet Will at the beach. Will who does not grace us with his presence, but rather speaks to us across time from Silvia's recollections and her letters to him. Will, who "walked out of the water, foam at your feet, the masculine version of Venus rising from the sea." Is he really that important to her, this Will who walked away from her hope? This Viet Nam killer who metamorphosed into a surgeon? Is he really that important or is he just an excuse to remember all the others?
Finally, is he just one more love that has gone the way of her father, drowned in the flood of a childhood mining town? The water was truly disobedient then. And yet, even that flood may have introduced her to the healing power of grace. What would her life have been without that flood?
Naslund, herself, is an accomplished writer who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. She moved around a bit, receiving degrees (including a Ph.D.) from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and receiving grants from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts. She is coeditor of The Literary Review (literary magazine) and has taught at several universities.
As for reviewers, the New York Times found her to have an "...eye for odd, telling details and a gift for rendering...this oddness in language." I don't know that I would agree with this view as much as with that put forth by Kirkus Reviews which found this to be "a rich gathering of eight meditative and beautifully written stories..."
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